"We are dealing with people far ... shrewder than we are," declares a sheltered young matron caught up in social upheaval beyond her understanding. She's right, too. Her less-observant husband, owner of the factory supporting the town's economy, has cut his employees' wages—a severe hardship in the depression years—only to find himself facing a strike. Both he and the strikers are anxious to avoid any violent confrontations, but the Union spokesman and the "security chief" accompanying the "scab" workers called in to keep production moving know better than to anticipate a peaceful settlement. When one of the thugs knifes the other during a card game, the corpse is then planted next to the labor leader's headquarters—a stratagem rendering tragedy inevitable.

Movie buffs, in their imaginations, have probably superimposed harshly-lit black-and-white cinematography on this drama already, along with a cast including, let's say, Frederick March, Teresa Wright and Spencer Tracy. But despite its ripped-from-the-headlines framing device, the real focus of this early Lillian Hellman play is the delicate balance of power invoked by privileged gentry under duress. The Rodman clan dynamic is already unstable—Andrew Rodman exhibits a curious reluctance to exercise his patriarchal responsibilities, wife Julie is having an affair with the family lawyer, spinster sister Cora is spoiled and pettish, and the servants do as they please—wanting only a brush with the movers and shakers in this world to shatter the status quo.

The Artistic Home is an actors' theatre, first and foremost, and the company, assembled under Kathy Scambiatterra's direction, deftly navigate its rat-a-tat dialogue to deliver uniformly well-crafted performances, down to the last nuance and grace note, redeeming all traces of heavy-handed propaganda. The technical values—in particular, Joseph Riley and Gretel Ulyshen's elegant sunroom, along with Adam Smith's sound effects—likewise reflect an attention to ambient detail contributing to suspense engendered by the high stakes in a war of attrition mandating hard decisions on all fronts.

In the grim light of 2009, when the separation between rich and poor grows increasingly fragile, and citizens of all subcultures grapple with questions hitherto the stuff of bemused fantasy, what better time for an old-fashioned morality fable to offer us guidance in our own affairs? To paraphrase the old song, which side will you be on?